


Just One Life

by Literary



Series: You Cannot Make Remembrance Grow [3]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Sun & Moon | Pokemon Sun & Moon Versions
Genre: Faller!Looker, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 14:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9185291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Literary/pseuds/Literary
Summary: Agent 100kr, a.k.a. “Looker” was a boy who had a real name, once.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of [this](https://lookerisms.tumblr.com/post/155356909651/what-did-your-character-dream-of-being-or-doing-as) because I couldn't resist. It might be a bit presumptuous of me to say this, but I think most kids who want to be police officers/firefighters/doctors want to have a heroic job. Anyway, it's easy for me to see. 
> 
> Featuring: Mr. Looker as a faller and corrupt!Interpol.

Agent 100kr, a.k.a. “Looker” was a boy who had a real name, once. And he had friends and a family, passions and interests, a favorite book and a favorite game. He had a quiet place he liked to spend his free time and a knack for sneaking cookies out of the cookie jar when his parents’ backs were turned. He was snuggly and affectionate and had reasonably good manners most of the time. He wanted to be a teacher when he grew up—no, wait! A carpenter! Or maybe even a _college professor_ , though he never could settle on a subject. He loved all of them equally.

But most of all, he wanted to be a hero.

There were all kinds of heroes out there, his father told him once. Anybody could be one; it only ever took one person to make a difference, however small, in someone else’s life. A teacher or baseball player or garbage collector: they all had the power to change lives.

He could be anything he wanted, and he could still be a hero.

But maybe his father’s words had been too quiet, or his dream of heroism was too great. The years passed as years often do. The boy had turned into a man and his dream of being a hero had grown narrow. He enrolled in the closest police academy and made himself an officer of the law. To protect and serve: did a more heroic option exist than that? Three years later, a stellar record behind him, passing fluency in several languages, and the rank of detective in hand, he applied to the Global Police. He was accepted and passed training at the top of his class.

He doesn’t remember any of it clearly. He only recalls waking up on a beach in Hoenn surrounded by strangers. The confusion of that day is still clear to him, the feeling of being eternally disoriented; and he will never be able to forget what it was like that first time, when he reached for the space in his mind where his name ought to have been and found  _nothing_.

But the Global Police were there, somehow, fuzzy around the edges, not quite a certainty. And the International Police found him, or perhaps caught up with him; even now he’s not sure what the truth is.

It’s been twelve years since that day in Hoenn. His code name is his only name, now. He doesn’t know anything else; doesn’t remember the cookie jar or his father’s face or his mother’s biggest bear hug. He doesn’t remember his neighborhood best friend or the name he used to go by or any of his old dreams.

When he tries to imagine the kind of child he might have been, he comes up blank. He might have been any sort of boy, tall and skinny, knobby-kneed, gap-toothed, freckled in the sunlight. He might have loved sports or pokémon battling or reading books. Maybe his parents loved him. Maybe they didn’t. And maybe he dreamed of being something wonderful.

He sees his childhood self as a disconnected figure, another person entirely; he doesn’t know him and he never will. It’s easier to think of it that way when he’s sitting at his desk after hours and he can’t stop thinking about all of the people he’s seen die, of all of the times he just wasn’t good enough to save them. And it’s easier when he’s thinking about Anabel, too, about how she’s been so manipulated into ignorance that she’s not even aware she’s being thoroughly used by their employer. It’s his fault as much as theirs for not telling her.

He must have had a reason for joining the police in the first place, he thinks. But he doesn’t know what it is, can’t imagine it and won’t let himself believe it was ever something grand and wonderful because the idea of letting that little boy down is just—it’s too much. He can’t take it.

But deep down he knows the truth. He was once a little boy who dreamed of changing the world—or even, perhaps, just one life.

And he’s failed at that.

He sits in his office at Interpol HQ. The sun set hours ago. He can see the chief through her open door, half-asleep at her desk but forcing herself to keep going, a fresh pot of coffee within reach. It’s hour number 72 for her so far this week and 68 for him. She doesn’t know anything, but she should.

She’ll spend the rest of her life like this, sent out as bait for the UBs to chase until one manages to catch her. It’ll happen someday. Blinded by a migraine; maybe she won’t see it coming. He’s dreamed it before, the images so clear upon waking he’s almost convinced it really happened.

But he can’t tell her. He’s not strong enough for that—not brave enough and not ready, yet, to accept the risks that come along with sitting her down and telling her all of the things she should have been told long ago.

So he forces his gaze back to his computer, to the expense report he’s supposed to be finalizing, and tries to concentrate on that instead of the fact that he can’t even work up the courage necessary to help even one person he cares about.


End file.
